I almost never review things I don't like, figuring it's a whole
lot better use of my time to direct my friends to things that are
worthwhile. But sometimesespecially when there's a trend
involvedit can be as important to slap mosquitoes as it is
to feed the birds.

After altogether too much hype over the past several weeks, CBSthe
Eye That Lieshas finally unveiled the latest evidence of the
fundamental incompetence and utter stupidity of network television
executives, with the sad premiere of their latest fascist fantasy,
Flashpoint.

It says here Sniper and Critical Incident were alternative
working titles to this sorry Canadian waste of the talents of Enrico
Colantoni, who charmingly played Veronica Mars' dad Keith on the show
of the same name. Here, he's leader of combination hostage negotiation
and SWAT team (does anyone but me see a certain degree of craziness in
that?) based in a version of Toronto that greatly resembles Los
Angeles. The only difference is the absurd police uniforms which are
highly reminiscent of the Nazi-like outfits sported in Starship
Troopers.

The first show attempts to reveal the "human" side of SWAT. The
team's chief killer-at-a-distance is in trouble with his wife because
he's missing his in-laws' 40th anniversary to attend a retirement
party for one of his colleagues. The subplot doesn't work; there's
about as much dramatic tension here as in one of Dave Letterman's "top
ten" lists, and it melts away in seconds when the team is called out
to deal with an immigranthe turns out to speak Croatian, but, with
a toss of the coin, he could just as easily been from Poland, Yemen,
or Grand Fenwickwho tells his grown son goodbye on the subway and
heads off to shoot his estranged wife where she works as a cleaning
lady.

I'm sure that the writers thought his choice of a Luger meant
something.

He then takes a stranger hostage and stands around on a pedestrian
mall for half of the episode, exposed on three sides, where he could
be taken out from behind at any moment by a Girl Guide with a BB gun.
The poor actor didn't stand a chance, either. He looked too much like
the late Zero Mostel to be taken seriously as a crazed Croatian
ex-husband.

It won't hurt anybodybecause nobody will want to watch it
anywayto inform you that, with another failed attempt at drama
when his son shows up and almost gets in the way, he finally gets
his skull exploded by the sniper on the zillionth floor of a handy
nearby skyscraper, who puts a .308 slug right into the top of his
head, showering the poor female hostage with bone fragments and
brains.

Yucky-poohow will I ever face my bridge club?

The sniper then spends the rest of the episode being investigated
by a bored, half-asleep Internal Affairs officer, and dramatically
not emoting over the terrible deed that his choice of career has
forced him to do (they even manage to misquote Gilbert and Sullivan on
the subject) which we are to assume is secretly tearing him apart
inside.

Ordinary stuff done poorly.

The simple fact of the matter is that police officers make a
living beating people up and killing themor threatening to do so.
My platoon's squadroom had a four-foot poster of a uniformed cop with
his gun drawn, pointing at the camera, with the caption, "Save Court
Costs". Individuals who don't rejoice in jobs like this, and relish a
well-placed shot, don't get jobs like this. Cops are routinely
advised (I was, anyway, in the 1970s, although I never had to shoot
anybody) to feign post-traumatic stress disorder after a police
shooting so that lawsuits by the relatives of shootees could be fended
off.

Oh the pain.

Oh the agony.

Can I go get a burger now?

But that's not really the point of this article. Consult your TV
Guide, or if you don't want to pay money for several dozen pages of
trashy advertising, trashier "personalities", and cretinous opinions,
go to www.Zap2It.com and see for yourself how many of these thug shows
are on TV these days. There's at least a couple every night. If you
add forensic programs like CSI and Bones (both of which I confess
to liking very much) and pile on endless reruns of authoritarian
garbage like COPS, they utterly dominate the mass medium, displacing
better shows. To make room for Flashpoint, they apparently killed
Moonlight.

COPS, you may recall, is one of the longest-running programs on
TV. When it first appeared, I was convinced that its purpose was to
desensitize ordinary folks to a society run by "law enforcement"the
standing army that the Founding Fathers opposed so vigorouslyand
nothing over the following decades has done anything to change my
mind. Today, our society is run by "law enforcement", uniformed
thugs perfectly crazed and willingas they were recently in Iowa
City with individuals they were insanely preventing from returning to
their flood-ravaged homesto kill you dead in order to keep you
safe.

What can we do about this?

Three things, really. The first is to writenot to networks,
butto sponsors, demanding an end to this vicious "entertainment"
trend. There are a lot of other things to make TV series about. We
knew that once, didn't we? How about something showing authorities as
the face-saving, ass-covering scumbags we saw in the aftermath of
9/11?

The second is to get rid of certain "modernisms" that have turned
our neighborhood cops into fascistic monsters. No more automatic
weapons. No more semiautomatic pistols. No more Tasers. Absolutely
nothing that is forbidden to civilians in their jurisdiction. If they
need more firepower than that provided by a six-shot revolver and a
four-shot pump shotgun, then let them call upon an armed populace for
help.

Two-and-a-half: no more SWAT. No more ski masksmake it a
felony for them to cover their faces. Put the last four digits of
their badge numbers on their backs in six-inch-high lettering, and
three inches on the front, as well. Yes, exactly like on football
jerseys.

Finally, we must seriously consider outlawing municipal police
departments altogether. Despite all the "thin blue line" crap they
shovel, all they are is mercenaries, and their interests cannot
run parallel to ours at all. They serve pseudoaristocratic masters
like Richard "Baby Dick" Daley, John "Propellor Beanie" Hickenlooper,
and Michael "No Mocking Or Insulting Middle Name Is Truly Adequate"
Bloomberg.

Who will keep the peace? The people will, as they always have in
truth, aided by the local sheriff and his deputies. Unlike the cops,
who hide beneath layers of bureaucracy, the "S.O." is accessible and
accountable. The sheriff has to run for office every year or so, and
his henchmen serve at his pleasure. If he screws up, then they're all
gone.

True, you get an occasional Mussolini wannabe like Maricopa
County, Arizona's Joe Arpaio, but with no police department to contend
with, more attention can be paid to getting rid of bad apples like
him.

It all starts with removing statist propaganda from the media.
That's the task before us now, a necessary step in restoring a free
country.

Are you up to it?

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of 25 books, including The
American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach,
Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches,
Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website
"The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel
Pallas was recently completed and is presently looking for a
literary home.

Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the
epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo"
May.

The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of The
Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and was
published by BigHead Press
www.bigheadpress.com
has recently won a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at
www.Amazon.com,
or at BillOfRightsPress.com.